| Phoning In. |
[Jan. 20th, 2010|08:30 pm] |
Today was my first day back in class. A few observations:
* Men do not know how to flush urinals. Why? Do they enjoy getting splashback from someone else's urine? I do not approve.
* When I ordered hot chocolate from a vendor, I was asked if I wanted creme or sugar. I'm wondering if this is some sort of drone who is so used to serving coffee that those condiments were offered as a reflex or if this is a new trend. Do not want.
* I think they've finished all the construction projects that they had started when I was a full time student, yet there's still construction. Peculiar. Related: Who would have thought that we would see the day when a Fresh Grocer adjacent to campus? It looks like that entire shopping center has been bought out by stores with more money. Capitalism and gentrification is a go.
* Apparently my school's book store doesn't sell bound books anymore? Maybe it's because I reserved them from the website. Now I need to get binders so I'm not carrying around a bunch of looseleaf textbook pages. Very weird. But, at least I have the option of not carrying around the Calculus I half of my math text.
* Unsurprisingly, my math prof is one I've had many times before. Oops!
Work is going along well. Lots of work on backend things the past two weeks to balance out all the HTML/CSS in December. If all goes as planned, I'll be eliminating a huge single point of failure very soon.
Godspell started up in full force earlier this month and it, too, is going well. Nothing much to add there.
Now I'm off to the laundromat so I can launder and bind my math text. Fun. |
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| 2009 Recap |
[Dec. 25th, 2009|04:20 pm] |
1.What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Performed outside of Upper Darby. Had a full-time job writing software. Lived by myself. Bought a car.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I kept my resolutions, but I will make new ones.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No. This is a good thing.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope. First time in a while I've been able to say that. :P
5. What countries did you visit?
None. :( :( :(
6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
I would have liked to travel some. Also, would have liked to manage my finances a bit better.
7. What date(s) from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
There were lots of great times in 2009. Nothing in particular stands out, though.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
See #1.
9. What was your biggest failure?
I didn't manage my time very well. I need to find a way to have enough going on that I feel satisfied, yet still nothing is falling to the wayside. I'm not good at managing that tightrope.
10. Did you suffer any illness or injury?
Allergies and a cold.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
My car. :)
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My fellow Seussicians, cast, crew, and production team, had fantastic A-game throughout our run. A+. :)
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I'm no gossip.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Taxes, student loans, rent, and insurance.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Seussical, Joseph, and Millie were all really fun, exciting, and fantastic.
I was very excited to get a non-contract job.
16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
I didn't listen to much music this year.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Hard to tell.
ii. thinner or fatter? A little fatter, I think. Need to work on that. :( :( :( WAY TO BRING IT UP STUPID SURVEY.
iii. richer or poorer? Poorer. Lots of expenses. But more stable? Maybe I can fix that this year.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Reading, gym, and local developer events.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Watching TV and movies. I got into a bit of a habit/slump with that this year. I need to really set hard limits on how much time I spend on that on a weekly basis.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
Having family over for dinner.
22. Did you fall in love in 2009?
No.
23. How many one-night stands?
I don't think any? Depends on how you define them, I guess.
24. What was your favorite TV program?
Ugh. Now for my shame! I've watched the following series in their entirety (or mostly) this year:
MASH. All the StarTreks except Enterprise. Full Metal Alchemist. The Office. Roseanne. Dr. Who. Band of Brothers. The Shield. Modern Family. Psych. True Blood. Glee. Greek. The Daily Show. Colbert Report. How I Met Your Mother. 30 Rock. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
That's just too much.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
In true spirit of my hybrid Jewish/Catholic upbringing, there's no one I hate but there are people who I am very disappointed in. ;-)
26. What was the best book you read?
I re-read Lloyd Alexander's Prydain chronicles. YES I KNOW THEY'RE KID BOOKS. SHUT UP.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Not really.
28. What did you want and get?
I don't really want anything over the holidays. My boss got me remote entry and remote car start, though, which was pretty sweet.
29. What did you want and not get?
See above.
30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Up was this year, right?
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I don't think that I did anything on the day of my birthday. Friends threw a party the weekend after.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Not sure! I'll think on that for next year. ;)
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Whatever is clean.
34. What kept you sane?
I don't think I used any crutches. Heh.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
That's not really my thing.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Gay marriage, health care, and the ridiculous Tea Parties.
37. Who did you miss?
Many.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
This time last year, I didn't know anyone from Bernies or Seussical, so all of you fine people. ♥ :D
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
I kept too busy to learn anything. Maybe slow down some?
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
No. |
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| Since posting more means memes are OK. ;) |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|11:23 pm] |
If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your LJ and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.
(via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ceemonster) |
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| Wherein I talk about college paperwork, ideas, writing copy, and library audiobooks |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|11:17 pm] |
In the spirit of writing more, I'm writing more. :P
Today I received word that my request to not retake all my classes has been approved by all the people with fancy titles who need to approve that sort of thing. Now I just need to register for my last class, and I will be set!
I tried scheduling an appointment to add the class that today when I first received the news at 4:55PM. After explaining what I wanted and being placed on hold, I was informed at 5:05PM that "The System" gets shut down at 5:00 and I could try again tomorrow. Some might be annoyed by this, but to me it's just home sweet home. ;-)
I often come up with bizarre programming projects and never follow up on them once the idea loses it's novelty in my mind. Not this time! I was struck with the best worst useless idea ever, and by golly I will not let that go to waste! I'm not going to write about it quite yet, though. Whenever I write about an amazing idea, I abandon it shortly afterwards. (Perhaps I need to become quicker as a programmer. Or, I need a longer attention span.)
Much of today I've been writing copy. It's important and needs to be done, but I can't decide if I'm bad at it or if I just dislike the task. Maybe it's a little of both. I'm eager for the month to be over so I can stop pretending to be a web designer and get back to writing software.
Earlier today I got very excited because I thought I could download DRM'd audiobooks from my local library. Upon closer inspection, I think you can only be put onto a waitlist to download an audiobook someday? Disappointing.
My Pandora station for this week is seeded by "Party in the USA" and "Single Ladies". I enjoy it, but you should pity my coworkers. |
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| Wherein I talk about Seussical wrapup, Godspell, brain rot, cars, and school. Also: I plead. |
[Dec. 11th, 2009|02:00 am] |
I've been busy, but not in a way that lends to great stories to share with the internet. Le sigh.
Seussical turned out to be an absolutely fantastic experience. Great performances with a wonderful tiny cast. It was a very consuming show in terms of energy and time, but in a really good way, so immediately afterwards it felt like a weird combination of loss and relief.
Last week I auditioned for a production of Godspell and was cast as the soloist for "All Good Gifts". That would make me Lamar, I suppose? It should be fun. I know next to nothing about the show, but the music I've heard so far sounds good. That starts early January and ends in March, I think? So it's a pretty short run. And after that I think I'm going to sleep for a while.
I've always explained to people that the artistic and scientific sides of my brain both get very hungry and so I feed the former with theatre and the later with coding. I'm afraid the coding half hasn't been as satisfied lately. It's gotten worse over the past few months, but the problem goes back a few years.
A big part of it, I think, is I don't talk to many other programmers in my day-to-day life. In fact, I have no close friends who are software developers. For me, there's an important social component to writing software which I have been neglecting since leaving college. Collaborating with others and bouncing ideas off of one another is a great way to grow new ideas and weed out the bad. Also, I enjoy being competitive and showing off. It helps to keep me sharp. Otherwise, I'm a single voice bouncing around in an echo chamber. That echo chamber is starting to take a toll on me.
Philadelphia has developed a thriving technological community, particularly over the past two years, and I need to get more involved with it. It would be very healthy for me.
That, and I think I need to either start or hook onto some open source project. I've given that idea a lot of lip service, but have done very little towards those ends. I'm good at what I do, but, again, I'm in an echo chamber. No one around me is qualified to tell me my work sucks outside of a black box testing sort of way, and I think that sort of environment makes it very easy to stagnate.
In more annoying news, in mid-October I was in an accident that totaled my mother's car. It doesn't really affect her that much. Due to a weird set of circumstances she has been driving her sister's car for years now. However, it did mean that I had to buy my first car. That was kind of annoying with a dash of excitement. I am now the proud owner of a silver 2010 Honda Fit.
In mixed news, I'm in a paperwork-based cage match with my alma mater, trying to get back in so I can finish my last few classes and get my BS. If all goes to plan, I'll be done either by the end of spring or the summer. Otherwise, I'm probably going to drop the whole matter forever because they'll want me to re-take a few dozen classes. My paperwork has been approved so far, but it's still being pushed further up the ladder. My major is no longer offered (wtf?) so a lot of fancy people with many letters before and after their names need to decide whether I can give them money in exchange for a piece of paper. Exciting, right?
LJ seems to have turned into a ghost town. I know that part of it is the company itself has turned to shit from the sounds of things, and another part is everyone (with a few noted and appreciated exceptions!) has moved to posting trite status updates in Facebook's closed garden (oh hi!) or Twitter's noise factory (hay!). It doesn't need to be that way! Come back, everyone! :P
There's still value in writing in essay form about how ridiculous your day was or giving bi-weekly updates on your life! There's so much noise in those other mediums and such little room for context and content that a few years from now when you want to be nostalgic, you'll still find great gems on LJ from 2001-2008, but very little from this period of time. FB's and Twitter's archives will be difficult to navigate if they'll exist at all and the content will be of such little value it won't even be worth the effort to go through them.
I know I'm a complete hypocrite because lately if I write bi-monthly, that's a good run for me. However! If you guys come back I promise I'll write more frequently. I'll even comment. Pinky swear. It's sad that my 20 most recent friends entries spans 5 days! I miss y'all. |
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| Remember in elementary school when the first assignment would always be to write about summer vaca? |
[Sep. 23rd, 2009|01:56 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | life update | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Jonathan Coulton - Best. Concert. Ever. - I Crush Everything | ] |
There hasn't been much to write about. The summer went by in a blur.
Back in June I was trying to get more in touch with my non-work geek. Went to some local User Group meetings. Want to do more of that soon.
I started some work on a web-based frontend for computer-based music notation and MIDI generation because everything that exists sucks in one way or another. Music can be incredibly complex and tricky to map. The only reasonable text-based route is Lilypond, which is an entire scheme dialect and there aren't any great GUI options. Most commercial options are incredibly tedious and error prone drag-and-drop based like Finale. And, don't even get me started on writing software that speaks MIDI. That's just a clusterfuck in and of itself.
As the summer picked up, all that went to the wayside. This was my last year at UD Summer Stage, which was significant to me since I have participated in that program for every year save one since 1996. I landed an ensemble role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, participated in a lovely Caberancetroupe, and directed a scene from Barefoot in the Park, all of which were rewarding experiences. I haven't often won things at the end-of-the-summer award ceremony, so it was an unexpected but very much appreciated pleasure to be awarded "Mainstager of the Year" and one of the two "OneActs: Best Director" awards. It was a nice way to end that chapter of my life.
Life has since slowed down a bit since then.
At the end of August I started rehearsals for Seussical at Narberth, a venue I never even stepped into before auditions back in June. It's less time intensive than what I was doing over the summer, but it is interesting since it's the smallest cast for a musical I've ever been in. Everyone is very talented so I need to keep my A-game on if I don't want to look like a dunce.
I've also taken up voice lessons again for the first time since high school. I didn't realize how much I've missed them until I started them up again.
As you can see, the theatrical geek side of my brain has been saturated over the past four months. I really need to engage in more computer geek recreational work to balance things out. That equilibrium is important to me. I need a new hobby project. Maybe something in Perl or C. Ruby is very pretty but I feel like I've spent too much time in that code culture over the past few years and I really miss in particular Perl code culture.
I need to take advantage of the time I have right now. If all goes as planned, I'll be finishing up the last two classes for my undergraduate degree in the Spring, so once that starts up time will not be in ample supply. |
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| New job. Life updates. |
[May. 9th, 2009|12:07 am] |
I keep on starting epic posts, running out of time, and marking them as private. At the time I intend to go back and flesh them out later, but when later comes either they no longer feel relevant or just don't seem interesting anymore. Clearly I am not a very good blogger.
In avoiding that trap, I'm going to try to keep this short and on point. Except for that meta-paragraph above. And this one too.
I've been working as a contractor for a university since January 2007. As a student, I had worked for them since 2002, but this was the first time I worked for them in a professional software developer capacity. It was exciting!
About two months ago, I found out that my contract for this year would only be funded until July. After some drama, soul searching, and job hunting, I ended up securing a position with my friend's company.
Then I found out last week, oops! The funding ran out three weeks ago. They extended my funding to cover the time I already worked plus this week to tie up loose ends, and fortunately my friend was in a position to bring me on a few months earlier than already planned.
Today was my last day working there. It's both sad and exciting to leave something that was familiar and constant for seven years. My old job was nice and convenient for a number of reasons, but I am afraid I was starting to get into a bit of a rut. It's nice to shake things up a bit.
I'll be doing work that's entirely different from everything else going on in the company which is weird but cool. I think it might give me the chance to have a large, perhaps unilateral, influence on the shape and direction of the work I do. I'm hoping that will translate into building awesome interesting things.
This shift in my career path combined with living by myself for the first time ever come the end of this month means my life might have a significantly different intonation this time two or three months from now. I hope it is for the better. |
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| Taking some time after lunch for OMG OLD MEMES |
[Mar. 3rd, 2009|01:02 pm] |
Big Five Test Results (take me)
The Big Five is currently the most accepted personality model in the scientific community. The Big Five emerged from the work of multiple independent scientists/researchers starting in the 1950s who using different techniques obtained similar results. Those results were that there are five distinct personality traits/dimensions. Here are your results on each dimension:
| Extroversion | 27% |
|---|
| Orderliness | 15% |
|---|
| Emotional Stability | 35% |
|---|
| Accommodation | 50% |
|---|
| Inquisitiveness | 58% |
|---|
Extroversion results were low which suggests you are very reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive.
Orderliness results were very low which suggests you are overly flexible, random, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense too often of structure, reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.
Emotional Stability results were moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.
Accommodation results were medium which suggests you are moderately kind natured, trusting, and helpful while still maintaining your own interests.
Inquisitiveness results were moderately high which suggests you are intellectual, curious, imaginative but possibly not very practical.
Global 5: sloan RLUAI; sloan+ rxUA|I|; primary Inquisitive; R(73%)X(50%)U(85%)A(50%)I(58%)
Jung Test (take me)
| Introverted (I) | 79.17% | Extroverted (E) | 20.83% |
|---|
| Sensing (S) | 54.17% | Intuitive (N) | 45.83% |
|---|
| Feeling (F) | 62.5% | Thinking (T) | 37.5% |
|---|
| Perceiving (P) | 70.83% | Judging (J) | 29.17% |
|---|
ISFP - "Artist". Interested in the fine arts. Expression primarily through action or art form. The senses are keener than in other types. 8.8% of total population. |
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| Why `rake db:migrate` is slow against large databases. |
[Feb. 19th, 2009|05:04 pm] |
I just realized why `rake db:migrate` takes so damn long at work.
Rails is generally designed assuming that the application will get its own database. This is normal in environments where "database" is a lightweight concept, as in MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite. After updating the database, it dumps the database schema to a file so when you install a new copy of the application you don't need to run dozens of migrations.
This works fine when there aren't many tables unrelated to your application, but in Oracle-land it's not unusual to put tons of applications all in the same massive database. Consider the following:
SQL> SELECT count(*) FROM all_tables;
COUNT(*)
----------
1747
Every time I add a single column to the database via migrations, all those tables get introspected and transformed into 13.5K lines of ruby. A three minute tax is added to an operation which usually takes less than a second.
I wonder if there's some way to turn off this behavior without hacking up their Rake file.
Update: Turns out this only happens if ActiveRecord.schema_format = :ruby. Change it to :sql and it won't try to dump the database. |
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| Desktops |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|04:30 pm] |
No one wanted me to make them anything? Oh well. Your loss. :)
We haven't done the meme where everyone posts their desktop in a while. Here's mine:
You should post yours too! |
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| Gift meme, via revjim |
[Jan. 23rd, 2009|12:50 pm] |
The first 10 people to respond to this post will get something made by me.
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make. But I'll certainly try.
- What I create will be just for you.
- It'll be done some time this year (2009).
- You get no say in what it's going to be. It may be a mix CD. It may be a poem. I may draw or paint something. Perhaps a photograph. I might bake you something. Maybe I'll clip a lock of my favorite section of hair, douse it with my cologne, and throw in a few fingernail clippings. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
There is also a catch.
You have to put this in your LiveJournal, blog, website, Facebook, MySpace, whatever as well.
(Comments are screened.) |
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| Ghost Town |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|06:34 pm] |
It's 6:30PM the day before an American presidential election and so far there are three new posts on my Friends Page.
LiveJournal is officially dead. |
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| LiveJournal is powered by the tears of furries and memes. |
[Oct. 17th, 2008|12:33 pm] |
Comment and I will...
a) Tell you why I friended you.
b) Associate you with something -- a fandom, song, color, photo, etc.
c) Tell you something I like about you.
d) Tell you a memory I have of you.
e) Ask you something I've wanted to know about you.
f) Tell you my favorite userpic from your list.
g) In return, you need to post this on your own livejournal. |
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| Wherein I tell lies. |
[Oct. 15th, 2008|05:52 pm] |
I normally don't look at browser statistics. However, since I'm about to start a new design of something, I was curious where we stand right now with respect to IE.
Before we start, let me confess that my data gathering methodology is completely flawed for a number of reasons and quite possibly misleading. Still, if we can compare flawed apples to flawed apples, we might get some ideas about the tree. I found these results a little surprising:
# Unique IPs identifying as IE6 - September 2008
[ ~/www_logs]$ zgrep "MSIE 6" . www.200809* | cut -b 17-31 | uniq | wc -l
474
# Unique IPs identifying as IE7 - September 2008
[ ~/www_logs]$ zgrep "MSIE 7" . www.200809* | cut -b 17-31 | uniq | wc -l
5520
I thought that IE6/IE7 in the wild was close to 50/50 or slightly leaning toward IE6 still, but I guess within our demographic that's no longer the case. IE6 numbers are actually slightly inflated because I noticed quite a few webserver cracking scripts running against us were identifying as IE6.
In contrast, here is where we were a year ago:
# Unique IPs identifying as IE6 - September 2008
[ ~/www_logs]$ zgrep "MSIE 6" . www.200709* | cut -b 17-31 | uniq | wc -l
848
# Unique IPs identifying as IE7 - September 2008
[ ~/www_logs]$ zgrep "MSIE 7" . www.200709* | cut -b 17-31 | uniq | wc -l
1044
IE6 IPs have been dropped by a little less than 50%, but more impressive, IE7 IPs have nearly quintupled! Of course, it's not all roses:
# Unique IPs identified as Firefox - September 2008
[ ~/www_logs]$ zgrep "Firefox" . www.200809* | cut -b 17-31 | uniq | wc -l
320
# Unique IPs identified as Safari - September 2008
[ ~/www_logs]$ zgrep "Safari" . www.200809* | cut -b 17-31 | uniq | wc -l
12
# Unique IPs identified as Google Chrome - September 2008
[ ~/www_logs]$ zgrep "Chrome" . www.200809* | cut -b 17-31 | uniq | wc -l
7
# Unique IPs identified as Opera - September 2008
[ ~/www_logs]$ zgrep "Opera" . www.200809* | cut -b 17-31 | uniq | wc -l
2
We sill have a long way to go!
(On a slightly different note - we have two Opera users? Are they using our app on their Wii or something??) |
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| LJ getting trashy... |
[Sep. 17th, 2008|03:23 pm] |
I just reinstalled Ubuntu at work, so I didn't have my Permanent Account cookie set when I first hit the f-page. People not logged in see ads on Early Adopter accounts? When did that happen? I thought it was only the "Plz Put Ads On My Page for Picture Storage" accounts that did that. Really gross.
Edit Snapshots is pretty gross too. But I did notice that change before... |
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| A more different meme. |
[Sep. 16th, 2008|09:54 am] |
Listed below are 30 answers. The questions are secret. If you want to know them, you have to agree to do this meme in your journal/blawg/whatever. If you're down for that, leave a comment with your email and I'll send you the questions.
1. Mike F.
2. Brian W.
3. Depends on duration. For just a day or two, anyone would be interesting.
4. A1, A2
5. Sam, Michelle. I guess. But really it depends.
6. Michelle.
7. Michelle.
8. Chris P, Mike P, Mike F, Liz.
9. That's actually a pretty long list.
10. A1, Mike P.
11. Me?
12. Spoilers.
13. Michelle.
14. Sam, A2 / Dan, Steve S.
15. Chris R. Hilarity ensues.
16. Becca.
17. Almost everyone I know?
18. Most animals I know. Tucker. Emma. Apollo.
19. A1, A2.
20. Yana.
21. Chris R.
22. Chris P.
23. Uh, Chris R.
24. No one comes to mind, so clearly they would have the advantage.
25. Liz, Steph, and A1 all seem to have decent track records, ;) although I'm not sure if that's the vocabulary I would use.
26. None.
27. Sadly, no one in particular comes to mind. Hm.
28. No one. :) Close proximity with someone for long periods of time like that is grating.
29. More spoilers.
30. Tempt not the fates. |
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| Can you paint with all the colors.. of Web 2.0? |
[Aug. 29th, 2008|06:16 pm] |
Someone on StackOverflow asked about Web 2.0 color combinations. Some people have collected the various colors and put them into spread sheets and JPGs.
It's well established that I have an odd obsession with taking pretty looking rectangles and making big grids out of them, so one thing lead to another and now I have a grid of colors and the companies who brought them to us.
So, now when someone asks you what Web 2.0 is, instead of saying, "I don't know. It's a stupid marketing term" you can say "I don't know. It's a stupid marketing term, but it looks sort of like this." |
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| fictional request. |
[Aug. 15th, 2008|03:25 pm] |
Now that rehearsals are over for this summer, I'm going back to commuting via mass transit next week. This means I have time each day to read and avoid urine puddles instead of listening to trashy Jersey radio and cursing at idiot suburban drivers commuting into the city.
My brain feel simultaneously shriveled from lack of good literature and somewhat burned out on the few nonfiction technology and philosophy books I've feed it this past year or so.
Please recommend fiction. :) I'm looking for stuff that's character driven, not fantasy/science fiction, and will make my brain feel good for the top of my list, but any suggestions are welcome. |
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| Time Change. |
[Aug. 13th, 2008|12:29 am] |
Previously I said that the Caberance Troupe will be Weds @ 7PM.
FALSE.
It was moved at some point to Weds @ 7:30PM.
You should still come. It's fantastic. :D |
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